Reviews

"Storyteller is a real liability if you have anything resembling a busy schedule. It hooks you from its opening sentence; that opening sentence then segues into a wonderful opening paragraph; the paragraph turns into a great first chapter and before you know it you're up to your armpits in stories about spies and foxes and movie stars and you don't want to tear yourself away. As engrossing as only the best biographies can be." --Tom Shone, author of In the Rooms and Blockbuster: How Hollywood Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Summer

"A balanced and juicy treatment . . . running through Dahl's years spying for the Brits and bedding a slew of Americans as well as the tensions, setbacks, and depressive jags that gave his work its texture." --New York magazine, "The Twenty; Our most anticipated fiction and nonfiction of fall"

"A major literary biography....Storyteller is so packed with intimate details, sharply intelligent commentary and surprising revelations...that it should be read immediately by anyone interested in Dahl, the ins and outs of modern publishing or the art of biography. I can't sing its praises enough." --Michael Dirda, The Washington Post

"A no-stone-unturned examination of the man who gave us Matilda and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory." -- TimeOut New York

"An exhaustive, yet exuberant portrait . . . Sturrock unravels the Dahl myth." --Susannah Cahalan, New York Post

"At the end of Mr Sturrock's satisfying and sparky tale, the reader has an overwhelming desire to rush off and read the first of Dahl's books he can lay his hands on." --The Economist

"Diabolically readable! Donald Sturrock--a goodhearted Charlie with the keys to the factory well in hand--makes lucky ticketholders of us all, revealing from deep within this exotic, guarded, often painful life the conjuring triumphs and dark tragedies of the 20th century's most wonderfully wicked storyteller." --David Michaelis, author of Schulz and Peanuts

"Donald Sturrock's Storyteller ... [gives] us a sprawling entertainment packed with anecdote and incident.... an engaging tale with satisfying episodes of glamour, intrigue, failure and renewal." --William Georgiades, The Wall Street Journal

"Sturrock captures the spirit of the man, his need to charm and entertain as well as his 'almost adolescent desire to annoy'.'' --Barbara Fisher, The Boston Globe

"Sturrock's superb biography . . . is a hugely readable portrait that examines vividly and sympathetically the life and work of a difficult, complex author who was adored by millions of children, loathed by many adults, and was possibly a genius." --Graham Lord, Daily Telegraph (UK)

"The person I met when I met Roald Dahl comes through vividly on the pages of Storyteller. Dahl told me that he was generally disappointed in what people wrote about him, but I believe he would have appreciated Donald Sturrock's beautifully written book." --Charlotte Chandler, author of I Know Where I'm Going